FBI (BOSTON) -- Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev managed to say just one word to a federal judge when charges were filed against him in a makeshift courtroom held at the side of his hospital bed: "No."
His reply was in response to whether he could afford an attorney.
As a result, Tsarnaev, 19, who is facing the possibility of the death penalty for his alleged role in last week's terror attack, will be represented by one of the most experienced and well respected public defenders in the country, Miriam Conrad.
Conrad heads the Federal Public Defender Office in Boston and her resume includes defending "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in 2001 for trying to blow up a Paris to Miami jetliner.
"She is excellent, tough, tenacious and wise," said Tamar R. Birckhead, now a University of North Carolina law professor who worked with Conrad for four years, including on the Reid case.
Tsarnaev is charged with detonating a weapon of mass destruction and maliciously destroying public property -- capital offenses that carry the death penalty. He is currently in the hospital being treated for wounds sustained in a shootout with police last week prior to his capture.
Conrad and several other attorneys from her office were listed in court documents as the team representing Tsarnaev. Among them was William S. Fick, who was present at Monday's hearing held inside Tsarnaev's hospital room. Fick requested additional help from attorneys who have previously handled death penalty cases, a requirement under federal law.
Conrad and her team have a difficult case ahead of them. They are trying to keep alive someone many would consider to be the most hated man in America. Their client is bedridden and barely able to communicate. Facing budget cuts as a result of the federal sequester, they are up against the U.S. attorney general and FBI that have made Tsarnaev's prosecution a top priority.
"It's a David and Goliath situation," said Birckhead. "There's an assumption that the defendant is guilty, and should be immediately executed. All of that is a tough road to travel."
ABC News Radio, April 24, 2013
Marathon tragedy fails to help death-penalty push
BOSTON -- The House killed a budget amendment reinstating the death penalty Tuesday, with area lawmakers split on whether the Boston Marathon bombings should sway the Legislature's vote.
"I would assume that with everything that's happened, with public-safety people putting their lives on the line, we would feel that we owe it to them to protect them," state Rep. James Miceli, the Wilmington Democrat who filed the amendment, said in an interview after the vote.
The amendment, filed before the Boston tragedy that killed three people and injured more than 260, would have imposed the death penalty for murders of public officials, including police, firefighters, and corrections officers.
On a 119 to 38 vote, the House rejected attaching Miceli's amendment to budget deliberations and sent it to the Judiciary Committee to study the death penalty's economic impacts. But some legislators, including Miceli and Rep. Shauna O'Connell, R-Taunton, were skeptical the Legislature would ever see the study's results.
"There will be no study; if there is it will be a one-page report," Miceli said.
The Legislature has rebuffed other efforts to reinstate the death penalty. Former Gov. Mitt Romney filed legislation in 2005 that would have imposed the death penalty for murders of police officers, terrorism or torture.
Massachusetts, which abolished the death penalty in 1984, is one of 17 states without it. New Hampshire is the only New England state that has a death penalty.
Source: Lowell Sun, April 24, 2013
